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This week on CounterSpin: Russia’s horrendous invasion of Ukraine is providing yet another reminder that when elephants fight, it’s the grass that’s trampled. We see that not just in the front-page casualties; teenage soldiers dying fighting; civilian men, women and children killed by dropping bombs—but also in the measures we are told are meant to avert those harms: economic sanctions. Khury Petersen-Smith is Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He joins us to talk about the problem with seeing sanctions as an alternative to war.
Transcript: ‘The Most Vulnerable People Lose When the US Imposes Sanctions’
Also on the show: In March 2012, Amazon opened an office dedicated to ferreting out tax breaks and subsidies. In other words, the megacorporation making hundreds of billions of dollars in profit puts in time finding ways to avoid supporting the communities it operates in—and to push local governments to divest money from education, housing and healthcare—to give to a company that doesn’t need it. This March, the group Good Jobs First marked that anniversary with a call to #EndAmazonSubsidies. We talk with the group’s executive director, Greg LeRoy.
Transcript: ‘Communities Should Not Pay Amazon. It Should Be the Other Way Around.’
The same U.S. Government that has actively targeted Venezuela for regime change with crippling economic sanctions for more than15 years, has now turned to the very same elected officials it has also refused to recognize diplomatically since 2019, in order to supplement the oil imports from Russia which are now prohibited by Executive Order.
If you are unable to recognize this hypocrisy, then you are probably in the wrong forum.
The bigger hypocrisy is when they say Russia is not a democracy and lacks freedom of speech and information but the Russian citizens are somehow complicit in the war for failing to speak out and thus deserve the punishment of sanctions. The irony is that they fail to see the contradiction in their arguments if Russia is not democratic how can Putin’s actions be representative of what the Russian public opinion. Then the gloating about the fact that Russia has began to limit the amount of groceries it citizens can buy.
The same fallacy is true for those who believe the U.S. is a functional democracy.
Typically excellent reporting. Hurray Janine!